<h1id="where-it-watches-the-slow-hours-progress-of-the-ode-clade">Where It Watches The <em>Slow Hours</em> Progress of the Ode clade</h1>
<p>Where It Watches The Slow Hours Progress of the Ode clade (or, to avoid the mouthful of a name, just Slow Hours) is a skunk, plain and simple. She stands at about five feet high and has the requisite black fur and aposematic white stripes: a single one starting just beyond her nosepad that runs the length of her snout up to her head, where it ends in a shock of white headfur, longer than the surrounding fur and brushed into something of a swoop to keep it out of her eyes. From the nape of her neck, it splits into two stripes that head down her back to her flanks, leaving her arms, pawpads, and those digger claws all black and the backs of her thighs ghosted with wispy white feathers of fur.</p>
<p>That fur that covers her body is long and soft, settling somewhere between thick and silky. Thick enough, it seems, that she has chosen a loose-fitting blouse and skirt - white and navy, respectively - to keep from tamping it down too much. Her tail bears the longest fur of all, sticking nearly straight out, bristle-like yet still as soft as can be.</p>
<p>As befitting her mephit status, her face is more plain of features rather than something bound by a well-defined snout and pronounced supraorbital ridge, fronted by a soft, black nosepad and a whole passel of whiskers. Black eyes shine amidst black features, and cookie-shaped ears struggle to poke out from the fur atop her head. There is a slight roundness to the cheeks, the chest, the hips, the belly - enough to suggest an affection for the finer foods in life.</p>
<p>Her countenance and stance land somewhere just shy of bubbly, upright without being prim, and with a sharp wit that only just manages to veer around goofy or rude. Kind, but not overly friendly; dancelike, but not too bouncy; preferring the sly grins and open smiles and dramatic gestures one might expect from, say, a theatre teacher.</p>
